The present disclosure relates to a zone of a coating installation and a coating installation with such zones. More specifically, the present disclosure relates to painting zones or other zones of an installation for series coating of application objects such as in particular vehicle bodies or attachments therefor using robots, including painting or other application robots, other manipulators for example for add-on units and/or handling robots such as for example door or bonnet openers.
In conventional paint booths for painting vehicle bodies using robots, the guide rails thereof are conventionally mounted laterally on the booth floor. For various reasons, however, it may be more convenient to arrange robot guide rails above the conveyor or even above the bodies, for example because they then impair the view through the side wall of the booth and the accessibility of the bodies or other application objects less, and/or because the elevatedly arranged robots have correspondingly improved freedom of movement, and/or because the elevatedly arranged guide rails are soiled less by overspray, which is led away downwards by the conventional airflow in the booths. In addition, elevatedly mounted robots may have the advantage that they disturb the airflow flowing downwards from the booth ceiling over the body sides into the booth floor less than robots located on the floor next to the body, which robots narrow the air pathway immediately by the body, which may lead to an undesirable increase in flow velocity.
In a paint shop described in WO 2004/037430 A1, a plurality of painting robots are in each case located on two parallel guide rails, which are in turn mounted on a frame arranged in the interior of the booth, with four pillars connected together by cross members, as in known gantry robot constructions.
EP 1 263 535 B1 also discloses a painting zone in a paint booth for vehicle bodies with air fed in through the upper ceiling and in each case two walk-in control regions arranged vertically one above the other on the side walls, robot guide rails arranged in elevated manner above the conveyor being installed in modular prefabricated side wall elements of the booth. Unlike the frame according to WO 2004/037430 A1 the load-bearing structures of the guide rails are separated from one another in the booth interior, cross members of the load-bearing structures thereby being avoided in the booth interior together with possible problems with regard to the mechanical stability of the known frame. On the floor of these known paint booths, which is formed, as is conventional, by a grating structure for removing the vertical airflow, there are mounted under the elevatedly arranged guide rails next to the lower control region additional guide rails for further robots, the robots of the lower level being painting robots and the upper robots being door or bonnet openers.
Paint booths for vehicle bodies with robot guide rails mounted vertically one above the other on the booth walls and with a plurality of painting zones arranged in succession along the transport path of the conveyor are known from EP 0 745 429 A1.
In the known painting zones with elevated robot guide rails, the side walls of the paint booths extend from the upper ceiling thereof perpendicularly downwards to floor level. Since the paint booths, including the walk-in control regions, must not be too wide in view of structural and investment costs, this gives rise to the fundamental disadvantages of known painting zones. On the one hand, the space available for the control regions is undesirably tight. On the other hand, with a given total width and enlargement of the control regions, the pathways for the airflow flowing downwards in the booth from the ceiling are restricted undesirably.
Another problem is the necessary support for the elevatedly arranged guide rails, which is naturally more difficult to achieve than with guide rails on the booth floor. Sufficient stability for guide rails mounted above the conveyor on a booth wall, in particular without their own crossbars at the level of these guide rails has hitherto been achievable only with an undesirable degree of structural effort for correspondingly stable side walls.
Accordingly, there is a need to provide a coating or other zone of a coating installation or an installation with a plurality of such zones, in which it is made easier for the robot(s) to reach the application object. For example, there is a need for having improved space utilisation while maintaining the best possible airflow and low structural effort.